Nina Weithorn
Gallatin Africa House Fellowship
Cape Town, South Africa
Just east of the main city center of Cape Town, South Africa, in the Constantia region, lies a tiny agricultural haven among vast wine vineyards and suburban homes. Soil for Life, a non-profit organization that teaches subsistence farming in township communities, established their main offices on a plot of land where they began testing out a myriad of growing techniques in what is now their official demonstration garden. Many of these techniques adhere to basic permaculture principles, meaning they utilize natural processes to create sustainable and if possible, self-sustaining systems for food production.
In a country with such a high prevalence of both food insecurity, malnutrition, and increasingly, obesity, interventions like Soil for Life’s, that teach people not only how to sustainably grow their own organic food, but also how to adequately feed themselves and their families, are much needed.
When I first arrived in Cape Town, the pervasive greenery that seems to line every square kilometer of the city, from the top of the iconic Table Mountain to the shores of Hout Bay, gave no indication that the soil in Cape Town is in fact unsuitable for growing most varieties of edible plants. Many trees, shrubs, and grasses are able to grow in Cape Town’s sandy soils, however plants like the ones grown at Soil for Life, beets, broccoli, arugula, carrots, onions, etc., require soil that is more capable of retaining moisture and nutrients.
The first technique Soil for Life teaches in their training programs is digging a trench bed, which essentially involves filling a three-foot-deep trench with compost materials mixed with the original soil to provide a bed with nutrient-rich soil sufficient for growing food (shown in Fig.1). For the program participants, improving the health of their soil is just the first of many steps in establishing their own home garden and for Soil for Life, the home garden is just the first step in teaching people how to improve their diet, health, and level of food security.
